T-Mobile testing new prepaid 'GoSmart' plan in select markets

There's no shortage of big T-Mobile news out there right now, and this one seems to fit in with what we're hearing the last couple of days. After announcing that it will no longer be subsidizing handsets starting in 2013, T-Mobile is also putting a new prepaid option through trials in select markets. FierceWireless has confirmed with T-Mobile directly that the carrier is looking to lanch a new set of plans called "GoSmart" with three different tiers:

$30 for unlimited voice and text

$35 for unlimited voice, text and 2G data

$45 for unlimited voice, text and "high speed" data

The first two tiers probably won't be too appealing to readers of this site, but the last one is quite interesting. T-Mobile's current prepaid offerings are a bit more complex, and you have to pay a minimum of $60 for any meaningful amount of data with unlimited talk and text. What is yet to be determined is what T-Mobile means by "high speed data" with these plans.

With its current plans, that refers to HSPA+ (or "4G" to T-Mo) and the user is then throttled to EDGE (2G) speeds after a certain point. Documentation of this new plan at this point is referring to "3G" as high speed, which leads to some confusion. T-Mobile hasn't operated its UMTS (3G) network independently for years, and has completely moved to just EDGE and HSPA+ for data services. We have to think at this point that this is just early confusion about a new plan.

Trials have begun and we'll surely know more about this plan if it ends up going live nationwide in 2013.